Tuesday, June 26, 2012

George Monbiot, the influential English journalist and
environmental activist writes
in the Guardian on the failed Rio+20 summit, under the deadline “After Rio,
we know. Governments have given up on the planet”.

It is, perhaps, the greatest failure of collective leadership since the first world war. The Earth's living systems are collapsing, and the leaders of some of the most powerful nations – the United States, the UK, Germany, Russia – could not even be bothered to turn up and discuss it. Those who did attend the Earth summit in Rio last week solemnly agreed to keep stoking the destructive fires: sixteen times in their text they pledged to pursue "sustained growth", the primary cause of the biosphere's losses.

Monday, June 25, 2012

Jay Rosen has given an excellent account on climate change, why it is a wicked problem, and how journalists could cope with its coverage. This was delivered as keynote address to the 2nd UK Conference of Science Journalists, June 25, 2012 at The Royal Society, London.

Thursday, June 7, 2012

I recently submitted a paper that was somewhat against the mainstream climate change conclusions, and needless to say the paper was rejected.It was submitted to a sociological journal which I assumed might be less partisan.But this is not sour grapes about rejection.I have come to view journals like clubs.If you don’t agree with the rules of the club then you don’t get membership.If you can’t find a club to join, start your own and seek like minded souls.But this is not about trends in academia, it is about one single comment made by a reviewer.

A new study published study in Nature alerts to impending catastrophic developments - this time not mainly based on climate change impacts but on wider developments caused by resource use. Here is the abstract:

Localized ecological systems are known to shift abruptly and irreversibly from one state to another when they are forced across critical thresholds. Here we review evidence that the global ecosystem as a whole can react in the same way and is approaching a planetary-scale critical transition as a result of human influence. The plausibility of a planetary-scale ‘tipping point’ highlights the need to improve biological forecasting by detecting early warning signs of critical transitions on global as well as local scales, and by detecting feedbacks that promote such transitions. It is also necessary to address root causes of how humans are forcing biological changes.

Saturday, June 2, 2012

In my series of interviews with Atmospheric scientists for the newsletter of the Atmospheric Science Section of the American Geophysical Union, I have now interviewed Christopher Castro, who is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Arizona. The interview was published in the May 2012 issue of the Newsletter - it is #15 in my AGU series (there is a second series, among scientists from the Hamburg Center of Excellence CLISAP).

Sustainable use of KLIMAZWIEBEL

The participants of KLIMAZWIEBEL are made of a diverse group of people interested in the climate issue; among them people, who consider the man-made climate change explanation as true, and others, who consider this explanation false. We have scientists and lay people; natural scientists and social scientists. People with different cultural and professional backgrounds. This is a unique resource for a relevant and inspiring discussion. This resource needs sustainable management by everybody. Therefore we ask to pay attention to these rules:

1. We do not want to see insults, ad hominem comments, lengthy tirades, ongoing repetitions, forms of disrespect to opponents. Also lengthy presentation of amateur-theories are not welcomed. When violating these rules, postings will be deleted.2. Please limit your contributions to the issues of the different threads.3. Please give your name or use an alias - comments from "anonymous" should be avoided.4. When you feel yourself provoked, please restrain from ranting; instead try to delay your response for a couple of hours, when your anger has evaporated somewhat.5. If you wan to submit a posting (begin a new thread), send it to either Eduardo Zorita or Hans von Storch - we publish it within short time. But please, only articles related to climate science and climate policy.6. Use whatever language you want. But maybe not a language which is rarely understood in Hamburg.

Deutsche Welle collects your questions about climate

The German broadcaster Deutsche Welle collects your questions via email, youtube, facebook and twitter, which will be the answer by an expert.